The Panamanian press reported that yesterday the two lawyers Norman Castro and Julio Macias filed a complaint with the Court Panamanian Supreme Court with the request to repeal the law 5 of 16 January 1997 with which the concession agreement between the Panamanian State and Panama Ports Company S.A. (PPC), the company of the CK Hutchison Group Hong Kong Holdings that operates the Cristobal and Balboa ports located at the northern and southern outlets respectively of the Panama Canal. According to the two lawyers, the contract, which is was automatically renewed for a further 25 years in 2021, would violate at least ten articles of the Panamanian Constitution, including Article 266 which would have been violated because the contract is not the result of a public tender procedure.

Specifying that the complaint also accuses the PPC of not pay taxes and social security contributions, the two lawyers have underlined that the 1997 Act is very similar to the mining contract where Panama gives a lot and receives in return little. The reference is to the twenty-year contract with the company Minera Panama, a subsidiary of the mining company First Quantum Minerals, which has been approved with the Law No. 406 of 20 October 2023 which on the following 8 November was was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. Castro and Macias pointed out that the 1997 law is very similar to that of the mining contract where Panama concedes a lot and receives little.

Quite obvious, of course, are the probable, presumed connections or far-fetched with the denunciations of the management of the Panama Canal and the growing presence of Chinese interests in the Republic of Panama expressed in recent months by Donald Trump, before and after the New Inauguration in the White House as well as with the audit Panama Ports Company started in mid-1940 last month by the Contraloría General de la República de Panama ( of the 21st, 23, 27 and 29 January 2025). Attacks to which the Panama Ports Company has replied noting that only in the last three years the company has paid into the Panamanian state coffers 59 million dollars, a figure that rises to $658 million over the entire contract period concession. In addition, PPC highlighted that in 2021 alone, it paid off $165 million in dividends and extraordinary contributions, including $35 million in dividend advances, equivalent to five years of dividends, at the request of the Panamanian State to financial crisis, and in the last three years paid $38 million in taxes on the traffic of containers periodically paid to the Panamanian State as established by the contract approved by law. PCC then pointed out that Panama Ports Company is the only Panamanian port operator in which the Panamanian State is a shareholder and receives dividends and payments for containerized traffic handled, which 99.9% of the company's staff are Panamanian nationals and that the company's investments in infrastructure and equipment amounted to over $1.69 billion.